"To every man upon this earth
Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better
Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his gods,
And for the tender mother
Who dandled him to rest,
And for the wife who nurses
His baby at her breast . . . . "

Horatius Cocles,
Thomas Babbington Macauley,
“Horatius at the Bridge”

La Triviata

Valentini, Martini, de Chevalier, and l’Homme de Courbier were German generals during World War II.

Since conventional weapons were expected to be scarce, when planning for an uprising, Polish – and American – national hero Tadeusz Kosciuzko determined that peasants armed with scythes would more than able to beat Russian and Prussian troops armed with muskets and bayonets.

Since 1066 England has been at war with France 25 times, albeit that the last occasion was in 1815.

In 1860 the U.S. Army determined that it required 300 horses to haul a million rounds of musket ammunition, some 62½ tons.

So serious did the British consider the German battle cruiser raids on their east coast in 1914-1915, that they began to erect fortifications against a possible German invasion.

During the American Revolution Britain attempted to hire 20,000 troops from Catherine the Great of Russia, who demurred.

On April 21, 1628, Albrecht von Wallenstein, already commander-in-chief of the Holy Roman Emperor’s army during the Thirty Years’ War, was appointed “Admiral of the Empire,” in which high dignity he commanded five vessels, only two of which could be dignified by the term “ship.”

During the Second World War, Pierre Glosterman (b. 1922), the only Frenchman ever to command an R.A.F. squadron, scored 33 kills against the Luftwaffe.